1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data display technique on a graphical user interface (to be abbreviated as “GUI” hereinafter) for file operations.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a file system that manages files as digital data has a concept “folder” to manage files together. A GUI of the file system is provided in the form of presenting icons indicating a plurality of files and folders and their meta data.
Conventionally, the user manually stores files in a folder. However, as the number of files to be handled increases, an automated process is demanded. To meet this demand, a “search folder” is used. The search folder is a folder which automatically searches and collects files or folders that match specific search conditions. This search folder may be either a folder in which the entity of a searched file or folder is allocated, or a folder in which only information (meta data) of the searched file or folder is stored to show to the user as if it were storing the entity.
Upon presenting this search folder to the user, search conditions are important information. Hence, a method of presenting the search conditions as meta data, that is, the name of a folder has been proposed (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 2006-048521 and 2002-099554).
However, when the search conditions are presented as the folder name of the search folder, the folder name tends to be long. If the search conditions are expressed in a character string format which is easy for the user to recognize, the character string becomes long. Also, when the search conditions are set for a plurality of meta data, and these meta data are to be enumerated, the folder name becomes long. In the format of presenting meta data of the search folder and other folders and files in a table form, if one folder name becomes long, the sizes of display areas of fields that display the folder names and file names are increased accordingly. This results in poor display efficiency.